John Matthews
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) The Washington Monument is a sight to behold on the DC landscape, and for the foreseeable future, the only way you’ll see it is from the outside.
The National Park Service announced Monday that the 555-foot obelisk will remain closed until the building’s entire elevator system can be modernized – an extensive project that will take several months at minimum to complete.
The Monument has been closed since August 24th, when a cable broke loose from the elevator’s cab. Prior to that, there had been numberous power outages and breakdowns that had made elevator service in the Monument sporadic for a period of months.
Park service officials said in a statement Monday that they hope to have an announcement on a timeline for the Monument’s closure within the next couple of weeks.
The Park Service has said previously that the modernization of the elevator system would require a nine-month closure.
Here is the complete statement issued by the National Park Service on Monday:
Despite the continuing work on the Washington Monument elevator, we have not been able to determine the causes of the ongoing reliability issues. As a result, we have made the difficult decision not to reopen the Washington Monument until we can modernize the elevator control system. The scope of work to be accomplished while the monument is closed and the duration of the closure are still being determined; we expect to have an announcement with those additional details in the next couple of weeks.
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